Auschwitz tourists urged to stop posing on railway tracks at Nazi death camp
Visitors of the Auschwitz Museum have been urged to “respect” the site, particularly in the kinds of pictures taken at the former concentration camp.
Image: Unsplash/Albert Laurence
Auschwitz Memorial, which preserves the former German Nazi camp in Poland, wrote on Twitter Wednesday, March 20, “When you come to @AuschwitzMuseum remember you are at the site where over 1 million people were killed.”
When you come to @AuschwitzMuseum remember you are at the site where over 1 million people were killed. Respect their memory. There are better places to learn how to walk on a balance beam than the site which symbolizes deportation of hundreds of thousands to their deaths. pic.twitter.com/TxJk9FgxWl
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) March 20, 2019
“Respect their memory. There are better places to learn how to walk on a balance beam than the site which symbolizes deportation of hundreds of thousands to their deaths,” it said, and shared examples of individuals balancing on the tracks for a picture.
Some felt that the guidelines were too uptight. David Berger (@davebergie) tweeted, “Sometimes you just need to de-stress a bit. Stop trying to manage everyone into ‘your version’ of respect.”
Auschwitz Memorial reasoned, “There are however more and less appropriate way of doing this within the historical site. Walking along the rail-line of the platform where hundreds of thousands of people were sent to gas chambers is one of those not appropriate ones.”
Many agreed with the museum’s post; its tweet has gained 14,000 likes on Twitter.
Francesca (@Just__Fran) wrote, “Why even bother going to Auschwitz if you’re going to behave like you’re in an amusement park?”
Auschwitz was the largest concentration and extermination camp in Nazi Germany. It was located at a railway junction with 44 parallel tracks, which were used to transport Jews in crammed freight trains throughout Europe to the camp.
Inside the camp, Jews were tortured and treated as slaves, and many met their deaths in gas chambers as part of the World War II genocide known as the Holocaust.
Auschwitz Memorial clarified in another tweet that pictures are not banned, but appealed to visitors to “behave respectfully.”
Today, it showed pictures that it felt were “great examples” in commemorating the camp that witnessed one of the worst horrors in history, as seen on its Instagram page @auschwitzmemorial.
Photographs taken at @AuschwitzMuseum by visitors can commemorate the victims & help us to educate about the #history of #Auschwitz. Indeed "a picture can be worth a thousand words."
We search through @Instagram to find those great examples. See it here: https://t.co/zg7dI2tfJs pic.twitter.com/CNiaIxI8AR
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) March 21, 2019
It noted, “Photographs taken at @AuschwitzMuseum by visitors can commemorate the victims & help us to educate about the #history of #Auschwitz.” /ra
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